Bethesda: Fallout 4 Can Beat Skyrim’s Sales

When Skyrim was first released back in 2011, the fantasy RPG racked up 7 million sales in its first week of availability. Four years is a long time but the game is still massively popular on PC in particular, thanks to its large modding community. On the other hand, Fallout 4 had rumours and speculation surrounding it well before the official announcement, which has made it one of, if not the, most highly anticipated games of the year.

But can the post-apocalyptic RPG sell better than Bethesda’s Fus-Ro-Dah-ing title? Or will it the controversy surrounding its graphics and the suggestions of the game just being Fallout 3 on newer consoles bury it? Bethesda’s vice president of PR and marketing, Pete Hines, has every faith that Fallout 4 can beat Skyrim, as he reveals in a new interview.

Fallout 4 vs. Skyrim

“I think this can top Skyrim. It could be our biggest release ever. But we will see. It is part of my job to build the megaphone that we hold up to the game, and the game decides how loud it goes. Just how big it is going to be is hard to say. Skyrim was a massively big deal.”

As Hines notes, it’s his job to say these sorts of things, but he’s certainly not the only one who believes that Fallout 4 will sell better. Back in June, UK retailers Simply Games, GAME, and Green Man Gaming all backed the upcoming RPG. Speaking to MCV, GAME’s third party content manager Mandip Bhachoo said that “when Bethesda Game Studio launches a new game, it is really is a defining moment for the world of video games and we expect sales of Fallout 4 to surpass those of Skyrim”, also noting that pre-orders for the game have been high.

It’s also worth pointing out that in the same interview, Hines revealed that Bethesda would like to release “three or four big titles a year” going forward. We shouldn’t expect them to start milking every ounce out of their franchises – “we are not thinking: ‘What if we did eight or 10 games a year?’ That’s just not who we are or how we do things”, says Hines – but hopefully we’ll see more of those ‘defining moments’ that Bhachoo and so many others enjoy.

Fallout 4 will be released on PC, PS4 and Xbox One on November 10, 2015.